Mistletoe
by Constance Greene
Summary: I’ll kill you the next time I see you with her. — RoxasOletteSeifer


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¤ **M i s t l e t o e** ¤

roxas × olette × seifer

( _myxbeautifulxlove challenge _)

( _dedicated to her && to tatikara_ )

Roxas ;;

You were not any good with drinking, I could tell from the start. So when I saw you get drunk off of eggnog, I began to feel the enveloping feeling of dread and worry sinking into place around me like a binding shrink wrap – no escape in sight.

I hadn't known you that well at the time of Seifer's Christmas party; you had just recently moved here and exposed your blonde head to the world of TLTW High School. I saw you in class every morning, first period, but your mind seemed to always be on other things. Skateboarding. Friends. Sometimes you'd be staring down at your paper glumly, as if trying to make sense of the notes you had just written down in carefully manicured chicken scratch. All those variables and signs, floating on lines of red, white and blue – so unpatriotic.

You were a bright student; I discovered that much when our algebra II teacher stuck us together for group work. You wouldn't be in that class if you hadn't owned at least a mediocre amount of brain matter ( which most people these days don't have ). At first you decided to sit slumped in your chair, those big, melancholy sapphire eyes staring down at the desk, unseeing, and I'd switch between points of nagging and working out calculations on my own alternatively. When our teacher called on me and not you, I was shocked. But the thing you did next shocked me the most. You couldn't have been paying attention to my five minutes of frustrated problem-solving, but after a moment of pause when you looked at the mile-long equation as though for the first time, you answered it beautifully and accurately.

I was stumped. You were a genius and had been hiding it all along buried within your silence.

You came over to me, cradling a personalized white porcelain mug of eggnog. 'Merry Christmas from the Almasy's,' it read in decorative crimson writing, and I supposed that my boyfriend was getting desperate, handing out embarrassing things like that and hoping ( or simply not caring ) that people would or wouldn't notice. Some noodles-for-brains had craftily spiked the eggnog, and now a giddy, dreamy grin was plastered on your face as you confronted me, making me doubt your recent displays of intelligence from the previous day.

"Look, Olette," Your words were slurred. "Mistletoe."

I raised my eyes and, indeed, above us was an emaciated sprig of mistletoe suspended from the ceiling. From somewhere in the corner of the room, a stereo played.

( _"All I want for Christmas is you"_ )

The next moment I felt full, wet lips pressing against my own.

You always had the nicest lips, forever pulled into an eternal pout.

I stepped back instinctively when a fist flew before my face, connecting with the side of your jaw. Seifer to the rescue. I was escorted away, directed through the crowds of people with the wispy smells of nutmeg and brandy hovering around my face, suffocating me, and with that the salty scent of tears.

( _"Just what do you think you're doing, Seifer!" _)

You standing there, dumb and confused with a trickle of blood curving out from the side of your mouth.

( _"You hurt him!"_ )

I heard you cry out amidst the commotion, adding to the chaotic volume like a world-class troublemaker, wanting to be noticed. And your grin had come back on your lips: an upwards tilt that looked positively mischievous.

( _"I love you!" _)

You said.

( _"Quit worrying about that little blonde bitch. I took care of him, didn't I?" _)

I saw that you continued to grin at that one threat Seifer first threw at you. No one thought twice about your declaration of love as they knew well about your intoxication and the effects it must have caused. 'Surely he didn't mean anything by it,' They all seemed to have believed and erased the situation from their memories as a simple little amusing mishap. I didn't forget; I kept your words in mind.

You met up with me whenever you could. The two of us together: we were a secret no one else knew about. Sometimes it'd be behind stores, if we were desperate. Or when Hayner and Pence were away, then we'd seek refuge in your hideout. You used to lead me by the hand and arm into the catacombs of the abandoned subway tunnels, and in the shadows I'd embrace the softness of your kisses with revelation. That darkness, within which we'd whisper fervent 'I love you's to each other, always seemed to close in on us and reminded me of Seifer's daunting words

( _"I'll kill you the next time I see you with her" _)

but you taught me how to push them into the far back of my mind. Maybe that will and ignorant refusal wasn't such a good thing; though I was convinced that _we_ were a good thing. Us – and that's all that mattered.

I wish we had been more careful that one time. I almost wish you hadn't swept my off my feet and twirled me in the street, like lovely bohemian dancers, and I wish my tinkling laugh hadn't been so loud and pierced our surroundings with shattering clarity.

You weren't laughing with me anymore when you were suddenly on the ground. This time, blood fanned down from your ruined nose, broken by Seifer's knuckles of intervening steel.

I screamed. Rai and Fuu restrained Seifer from punching you again by holding his arms back. He was going to kill you this time, he said. He had to. Had to put him out. I was scared and crying. You were grinning.

"You're all talk, Seifer. All talk and just fists.

Go stuff it in your mouth for me, will you?"

You were trembling slightly, perhaps out of anger or fear that Seifer would continue his punishment. But Seifer was done. He left you with a kick to the side, and left me, too, not taking me away this time. He left us to nurse our wounds and hurt, and I crawled towards you and wrapped my arms around your shoulders. You were my only, my inextinguishable joy. I only got to see you 'smile' in the worst times.

I waited as summer came. It wasn't the season for us. Winter had been like spring, reversed – love had blossomed and formed under impossible, frigid conditions. We didn't have to hide anymore. We had been found out. So we stopped.

You allowed me to become friends with your friends in our modesty. We molded into one: RoxasHaynerPenceOlette. Seifer became the enemy. In a way, he always had been, but I had just been too blind to see.

( _"I'll kill you next time"_ )

I felt strangely aloof when I heard that you had died in the woods that Christmas, hung beneath the mistletoe. Your face, they said, was barely recognizable since it was mutilated because of what could only have been by blunt and heavy fists. There was no open casket at your funeral, but I could still picture your blonde hair in my mind as I closed my aching, tired eyes. Tears would not form in them even as I felt as though my entire being was drowning.

It is because you do not cry at your own funeral.

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author's note ;;

yay. :D

i finally wrote something. this has been weighing down my conscience for quite a while. i'm such a procrastinator.

this idea popped into my head this morning and i immediately had to write it. i tore up my other idea because it sucked. a day after thanksgiving and i'm writing a christmasfic – i know, right? xP holiday spirit!

anywho's. inspired by various things, like a really great book, and a oneshot by tatikara. oh and a song. i wanted to write a depressing deathfic sort of thing, like this, in this way.

i also want to get tat to write ( && UPDATE something, durnit ).

kh && other stuff does not belong to me.

comments, compliments, anyone? hope you liked it. reviews make me the happiest evarrr.

yeah, this is what you get after months of writer's block. bleh.

¤


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